Poornima Manco

Author

anger

A Curious Incident in the Post Office

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It was a Saturday morning, and I was feeling quite Zen. I’d just come back from doing a Body Balance class at the gym. The sun was shining and life felt good. There was an Amazon package I needed to return, so off I trotted to our local Post Office/ Newsagent, hoping to tick off at least one chore on a long to-do list for the day.

At the Post Office, I stood behind an older man in the queue as he communicated with the Bangladeshi gentleman serving him. I detected an American accent and wondered to myself whether he lived locally while mentally working out what else needed doing after this errand. Meanwhile, I spotted that there was in fact another customer, a pink-haired lady standing to one side waiting her turn after the American man.

So far, so very normal.

Then, the Bangladeshi shop assistant spotted the package in my hand and said, “Madam, the post has already gone for the day. The next one is on Monday…”

I replied, “That’s okay. I don’t mind when it goes out. I just need to drop it off…”

Before I could say any more, the American man turned around and snarled at me, ” I was here FIRST! DO NOT PUSH AHEAD OF ME!!!”

Startled, I responded, “Hey! It was the assistant who spoke to me first…”

He turned around again and shouted, “BACK OFF AND SHUT UP!”

His entire body was radiating rage. If he could have reached forward and hit me, he would have. There was spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth and he narrowed his eyes at me, as if just waiting for one more word so that he could smack me. When I refused to engage, he turned his back on me.

At this point, I noticed that he was shaking while counting the money he had withdrawn. I stepped farther away, sensing all was not right with this man. The woman who had been witness to all of this spoke up, saying, “There is no need to be this rude. She was not interrupting your transaction. The postmaster addressed her first.”

At this, he growled at her, “SHUT UP! DON’T TALK TO ME!”

We exchanged glances, and she mouthed, “Americans!”

Now, before I proceed further with this story, I must add that I have plenty of American friends, acquaintances and colleagues who are the loveliest people. Kind, thoughtful, giving, polite and pleasant. He was NOT one of them.

I mouthed back, “Yeah, an ugly one.”

At this, he snapped, “It’s not because I’m American, okay? You were rude!”

We both retaliated with, “No, YOU were rude! We were just waiting patiently in the queue.”

He went back to counting the money, switching from being horrible to us to being polite to the postmaster. At one point, even the postmaster looked at me and gave a tiny shrug, as if to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy?”

A few minutes elapsed while the lady and I chatted about the sad state of all the banks closing down in the area. I was still shaken from the encounter, but didn’t want him to sense that he’d frightened me in any way. He was a bully, and I refused to give him the satisfaction.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”

The lady looked at him and said, “I get it. It is stressful that all the banks in the area have shut down, and that you need to come to the Post Office now to withdraw money. Even so, there was no need for that sort of behaviour.”

He was still shaking and looking at her when she responded softly, “Alright, I forgive you.”

Then he turned and gave me a supercilious look, waiting for me to say the same. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “No, I don’t forgive you. Your behaviour and your language were uncalled for. That was an unprovoked attack, and no, I won’t forgive you.”

“Fine,” he muttered, “don’t forgive me then.”

When he’d finished counting his money, he peeled off £20 and handed it to the lady, saying, “Here, buy yourself something with this.”

She pocketed it happily, saying, “Thanks, I will.”

He then held out another £20 to me.

I took another step back.

“No, thank you. I don’t want your money! Back off from me right now!” I didn’t raise my voice, but I was very firm as I said this, resolute that this man’s unwarranted behaviour would remain unforgiven, at least by me.

He shrugged, threw me a dirty look, and walked out the door.

After this entire incident, the Bangladeshi shop assistant felt sorry enough for me to take my package for a Monday pickup.

 

My questions are:

Was I wrong not to forgive him in the first place?

Was he trying to buy my forgiveness?

Can money really be the answer to bad behaviour?

 

Upon reflection, I have forgiven him. Clearly, he wasn’t a well man. The problem could be psychological or physical, maybe he has a very stressful life. I’ll never know. But I am proud of myself in that I refused to be bought. My integrity and self-respect were not for sale. Perhaps my refusal of his money will make him reflect, too. Maybe he’ll learn a little something from this incident as well.

People are not commodities. Treat everyone with the respect that you wish to be accorded. A heartfelt apology is worth far more than all £20 notes you might throw around.

What do you think?

 

The multiple sides of Megxit

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Living in the United Kingdom, it has been nigh on impossible to escape the news that Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have decided that they want to be part-time royals. What an outcry there has been! Is this a second abdication of duty, prompted by another American divorcee? Are they trying to have their cake and eat it too? And what of all of Harry’s attacks on the media? Is Meghan so thin-skinned that she didn’t realise that scrutiny was par for the course in her position?

I am no royalist, but I am fascinated by the media circus around them. Back in the ’90s when I first moved to the UK, I couldn’t turn sideways without being confronted by another headline or photograph of Princess Diana. To me, at the time, it seemed outrageous that the woman was given no modicum of privacy, that her every move was watched, papped and analysed in the minutest detail. We all know how that ended.

The appetites of the masses are fed by the salacious gossip peddled as news by the tabloids. It’s like the royal family, with all their prestige and titles, have to behave like puppets who perform to earn their keep. Whatever feelings or opinions they may have on the matter are never ever to be aired. Given time, if they’ve played the role well enough, they may well become inviolate in the eyes of the media and the masses. But that could take years, and they had better not step out of line in the meantime.

Meghan was always different. Strong, opinionated, mixed-race and divorced, this ‘breath of fresh air’ was cut very little slack right from the start. Like all other royal wives, she incurred the slurs and the brickbats that came her way. Reports of her having driven a wedge between the brothers, having made Kate cry, been a demanding diva before her wedding and regularly upset her staff making some key people quit, appeared all over the tabloids. Was any of it true? No smoke without fire, people said. Could these reports have been hugely exaggerated? No rebuttals came from any parties. And so the myth evolved.

Now, none of us is privy to what’s gone on behind closed doors. Maybe Meghan was difficult and demanding, maybe the brothers did fall out and maybe things could have been handled differently by all the parties involved. But here’s the thing: which family doesn’t have its share of problems? Arguments, disagreements, not seeing eye to eye on issues has happened to all of us, all over the world, just not in such a public way.

In a saga to rival a soap, Harry and Meghan decided to decamp to Canada. Yet, they were willing to still perform whatever royal duties were required of them. Over a meeting with her son and grandsons, the queen agreed to his request, but in turn, imposed her own conditions, the details still being hammered out. However, her tone was conciliatory, and her handling of the situation incredibly astute and diplomatic, just as any wise matriarch’s would be.

What I find astounding in all of this is just how vilified Meghan has been by the tabloid press and by the masses. How is it possible for people not to see that for an educated, independent woman, royal life could prove stifling and claustrophobic? That even the most self-possessed person could eventually let the enormous barrage of criticism get to her? That Harry was only wanting to do the best by his family?

Let’s face facts for a minute. Harry is sixth in line to the throne and knew that in time his relevance would only decrease. What’s wrong with him wanting to carve out a separate identity from that of The Crown, from wanting to establish his own credentials, and display his own personality? As for whether the tabloid attacks on Meghan were racist or not, ask a person of colour that question, not some old, white guy who looks at the headlines from his narrow perspective of white privilege and says, no, not at all!

In no way am I trying to defend or justify any single person in this entire episode, but let’s just try and bring some level-headed clarity to the situation without putting on the blinkers of our judgemental selves.

Why has Harry and Meghan’s stepping down as senior royals been more significant than Prince Andrew’s shady involvement with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein? What about that awful, dissembling interview of his? Where are the constant headlines about that? Where is the never-ending hue and cry? Where is the persistent vilification, the denouncement, the anger? Where?

Ultimately, what happens to Harry and Meghan has little bearing on what happens to us in our daily lives, yet we watch slack-jawed, hungry for details as another family combats its internal travails, a family that we want to be ‘perfectly royal’, to have no problems because why would they, with all that money and privilege? Yet, when they do, we want all the dirty linen washed in front of us, because how else will we get our kicks? How else will we feel better about ourselves, by knowing that no one is immune to pain, regardless of status or stature?

Maybe it is time to look away, time to let them sort things out and time to let the dust settle. It’s the least we owe Diana’s son.